


You Ain't Ever Gonna Burn my Heart Out

by onourown



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coming of Age, Hogwarts Era, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 18:44:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18036800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onourown/pseuds/onourown
Summary: Sirius Black, who he was, who he becomes, and who his destiny forces him to be.An anthology of a character I've always really adored. Starts the Summer before the Marauders' first year, and will continue until the very end.





	You Ain't Ever Gonna Burn my Heart Out

**Author's Note:**

> I hope that you’ll excuse if this is a bit rusty, it’s been ages since I’ve written anything but I decided this was something I really wanted to give a go. I hope that you’ll enjoy and stick through it...I’m looking for this to be a sort of anthology of Sirius Black, a character whom has always been very, very dear to my heart. It will eventually have Sirius and Remus getting together (hope I'm not spoiling too much for anyone, although I do have the relationship tag on it...) Please bear with me through this slow burn story!

Sirius Black was always an unruly child.

 

In the sitting room, while his mother entertained an endless amount of Highborn wizards and witches, while he fidgeted, slumped over in his armchair. In the dining room, when his father would chide him for eating with his elbows on the table, causing him to spell him to the back of his chair so he could get it right. In the far too early hours of the morning, when he would lie awake and wonder if perhaps he wasn’t meant to be where he was, the person who he was, as he read a muggle book his Uncle Alphard had told him not to tell anyone about.

 

They were sitting at the table, the candles in their holders on the wall casting everything in a low light; the candles on the table casting shadows over everyone’s faces. Sirius had not said much, while his brother Regulus was discussing with his father one unimportant thing or another. It seemed like buzzing in the background of his life, Father going incessantly on about this which had happened at work, or that which he had read in the paper about some muggleborn whom he believed didn’t deserve whatever position they would have undoubtedly earned.

 

“Mudblood”, he would call them. The word made Sirius’s skin crawl, like he needed to stand in the shower with the water on as hot as it could be for as long as he could bear it. 

 

“Sirius, you haven’t touched your food,” his mother said shortly, breaking him from his uneasy trance. The tone was not one of compassion, but of annoyance.

 

He looked up at her, his grey eyes meeting her blue. The gazes they held between each other spoke of many things: unease, discontent, bitterness, maybe deep in their hearts something that could be conceived of as love.

 

“I think I have quite lost my appetite,” came his reply, equally short. Equally annoyed.

 

“You must eat your dinner,” she said, curtly, continuing to fix him with her icy stare. “You will be going to Hogwarts soon, and I will not have anyone thinking that you are a sickly boy incapable of carrying on our family name.”

 

It would always come to this. The Family Name, the most important ideal in their entire world. It seemed much bigger to them than anything else, bigger than the people walking down the street outside of their window, than the books filling their old, dusty library, than the relationships they ought to share.

 

Not wanting to incur any more of her resentment, he started to push his food around his plate. It seemed to be the highest point of discussion, since his letter to Hogwarts had arrived. She was undoubtedly already thinking of other “suitable” matches she could mold together. “Suitable” here meaning, someone of high standing whose family name is of utmost importance, where bigotry and hatred meant little in the face of seeming above all others. 

 

Eating one small fork-full after another, he diligently finished his plate and pushed it in front of him, eager to leave the stuffy, dark room. 

 

“May I be excused?”

 

* * *

 

He was sitting in the garden, staring intently at the ground. The summer sun seemed reluctant to set, and it cast the world in a beautiful golden light. He always loved this time of day, the air wasn’t too hot and the light wasn’t too scarce. 

 

He stretched his left hand over the grass growing there, not very thick; Mother always made sure to keep it perfectly manicured. He concentrated very hard, feeling as though all of the energy in the world was pooling from his palm and into the earth. He started to see it move upwards, growing at a rapid rate, and long stems of green began to grow. More intently now, he continued at his task until they had blossomed into beautiful pink flowers, little red hips poking out from the middle.  

 

_ ‘Beautiful _ ,’ he thought. He always enjoyed creating something beautiful in a place that seemed to hold nothing of the sort. Almost as though it were an island he could escape to, this little patch of flowers poking up from the immaculate grass. 

 

Regulus was stood behind him, his eyes fixed on Sirius’s hands as he began to grow more flowers, these ones taller but no less pink.

 

“You shouldn’t be doing this sort of magic,” he says, nervously. “Not when you’re going to get a proper wand soon...and you’re off to school.”

 

Sirius shrugged, not looking away from the earth, where the flowers grew longer and more plentiful. 

 

Regulus sat down next to Sirius, and reached his right hand out, as though he were a mirror of his brother. Concentration etched on his brow, as he stared down at the earth. The flowers seemed to still for a moment, before they were ripped from the ground, upended, floating for a moment before they settled into his hand.

 

The world seemed to still for a moment. Sirius’s gaze was locked onto the ground, where his creations had been before. And then, Sirius looked up at his brother, shocked, betrayal in his now watery eyes. 

 

“What have you done that for?”

 

Regulus, embarrassment shining over his face, with pink tinging the tips of his ears, had his head bowed as his lower lip began quivering. 

 

“I thought,” he started, as though trying to find the words. Regulus was never one to mince about with them, even as a child. “I wanted to give them to mother. She seemed so unhappy at dinner.”

 

The “with you” went unspoken between the two of them, but Sirius knew from a lifetime spent together that this was what he had meant.

 

“They weren’t  _ for  _ mother,” Sirius interejected, angrily. He stood up quickly, so quickly the blood had rushed from his head and into his legs, making him feel faint. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Regulus said, in such a small voice that Sirius almost took pity on him. But it was no matter to Sirius, who was angry now. 

 

Angry at his father, for trying to fill his head with hatred. Angry at his mother, for always expecting him to be someone he wasn’t. 

 

Angry at Regulus, for being that person.

 

He stared at the flowers now in his brother’s hands with such venom, the grey in his eyes looking almost black. The blood was starting to pound in his ears, his heart racing, the sound of it almost scaring him. 

 

They fell again to the earth, slowly, as if being carried by the wind, where they went up and into a blaze, leaving nothing in their wake but a pile of ash.

 

* * *

 

Diagon Alley felt different this time.

He wasn’t sure if it was the anticipation of the future, or the nice summer breeze that he felt was lifting his feet off the ground and into another step, or just the fact that he was happy to be out of his stuffy house.

 

He always felt better being outside. You couldn’t say that walking along the busy street was the same as being out in “nature”, but he could taste the wind and feel the sun on his face. The storefronts were bustling, nearly flaring with color in his eyes. He wished he could spend every day of his life this way, instead of shut up in his black and green home, barely listening to tutors, arguing with Mother.

 

His mother now stood upright next to him, her perfect posture making her seem imposing and taller than she really was. She was walking briskly, as she always did. Her nose turned up at many of the passerby, and she shuffled him along, passing the many other families on the same trek as they, her hand on his shoulders, until they found themselves in Twilfitt and Tatting's.

 

Three sets of plain work robes, one plain pointed hat, one pair of protective gloves, and one winter cloak later, Sirius stood next to his mother. He was excited to be moving along. He had been waiting to go to the shop on the corner, the one his gaze had been searching for since they left the Leaky Cauldron. The thought of a wand, all his own, something no one would ever be able to take from him, was exhilarating. 

 

“We’ll be needing scarves and hats,” his mother mentioned to the shopkeeper, with almost a hint of pride seeming to be in her voice. “Silver and green.”

  
They continued down the high street, purchasing books, cauldrons, a telescope, a set of brass scales. But Sirius longed for only one item, something solely  _ his _ . He would wear all of the green his mother wanted, if it only meant he could have this one thing.

**Author's Note:**

> The two flowers Sirius had grown were dogs-rose (I thought appropriate), and Rosebay willowherb (the county flower of London).


End file.
